


Missing Piece

by BlueNeutrino



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hoffman lives, Horror, Implied Cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:46:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23808604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNeutrino/pseuds/BlueNeutrino
Summary: Lawrence Gordon should have known better. If the jigsaw piece represents the missing survival instinct, that's something Mark Hoffman never lacked.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	Missing Piece

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure I'm going to take this anywhere in particular, but Spiral's been delayed and I'm on a quarantine binge of these movies, so here is one of many possible scenarios I've considered for Hoffman's fate.

It’s not a trophy. Never has been.

It’s a _symbol_.

What the jigsaw piece represents, in John Kramer’s own words—the missing piece of the human puzzle. The lack of survival instinct.

Dr Lawrence Gordon has one to collect.

The door to the bathroom screeches as he pulls it open, a familiar sound that had once haunted his nightmares before he learned to accept Jigsaw’s gift. With a nauseating flicker and the harshness of daggers, the lights turn on. His cane clacks on the grimy, cracked tiles as Gordon steps inside.

Mark Hoffman’s body is looking worse for wear. Thirty days it’s been since the door had last slammed closed, suppressing the detective’s screams as Gordon left him to rot in the dark. The doctor wonders how many of those days he’s been dead.

Up to two months, studies have shown the human body can survive without food. Merely three days without water, though, judging by the scruff on his scarred face, perhaps Hoffman held on for longer. He’s not as decayed as Gordon had expected. There’s signs of his struggle—desperate attempts to free himself of the shackle leaving behind more blood amassing with the filth on the floor. 

The toilet seat’s been pulled off, an obvious effort on Hoffman’s part to smash his ankle, though it lacks the weight of the ceramic lid of the cistern that now lies on the far side of the room beyond his reach. Some of the tiles have been pulled off the floor, snapped in two to leave a sharp ceramic edge that Gordon can see the evidence was used to try to hack through Hoffman’s heel. He had more success than the doctor would have expected, but not enough. Chunks of flesh still hang onto his foot by threads, bone exposed beneath crusted blood, and still the cuff sits just above the bump that it can’t hope to pass.

The pipe, stubborn as ever, hasn’t budged.

Gordon sighs, slipping the scalpel from his pocket as he draws closer and navigates how to crouch on his artificial foot. The skin of the corpse in front of him is waxy and pale, the face that had once snarled at him in anger now turned slack, hollowed out and grey beneath the eyes. There’s stale vomit on Hoffman’s lips.

Still grappling with his balance, Dr Gordon sets his cane on the ground and reaches towards Hoffman’s shoulder. The jacket is already off—at one point perhaps used as a tourniquet, then a bandage to stem the bleeding, in the end perhaps discarded altogether in the delirium accompanying starvation.

Lawrence considers where to cut. At first he tugs at the collar of Hoffman’s shirt to expose the meat of his shoulder, opting for the simple; the obvious—then he pauses. The tip of the scalpel wanders to rest on Detective Hoffman’s cheek. Ironic, to take a piece of the scar that embodies the man’s survival instinct, left behind when he’d ripped his face free from the jaws of a reverse bear trap. Poetic justice, even. On Jill Tuck’s behalf.

The blade makes its first cut.

Dr Lawrence Gordon should have known better. Should have spared more than a glance for the abandoned body of Adam Stanheight, long enough to notice the teeth marks gnawing at his decaying bones. Should have recognised the morsels of decaying flesh in Hoffman’s vomit. Should have felt that the body he’s touching isn’t quite stone cold.

Three days, the human body can survive without water.

He chained Mark Hoffman up right next to the fucking faucet.

A vibrant droplet of red trickles down a pale check, and Lawrence has just long enough to register the flash of wild eyes before his prosthetic foot is kicked out from under him and the press of his own cane is biting at his throat.


End file.
